The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast for water traders by water traders where we’re scaling up on water treatment
knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems hello everybody out there in the scaling-up nation my name is tres
Blackmore and I am delighted to bring this program to you called scaling up
it’s been very exciting for me we’ve only been on for a couple of months but I have received so much positive
feedback that you guys are really getting a lot out of it and you’re letting me know that by emailing me on
scaling-up h2o comm so I appreciate that of course use that information to guide
how I am doing future shows letting me know what guests to bring on the show letting me know what to talk about and
questions and all sorts of stuff like that so please keep those coming and
today I’m just going to get right into the interview because most of you out
there are on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is
probably dominated in water treatment community by James McDonald and James
McDonald and I have known each other for quite a while in the association of Water Technologies he’s always been a
committee chair I’ve always been a committee chair so we go to the committee chair meeting every year and
from that we’ve just we’ve just gotten to know each other and I have a tremendous respect for James McDonald so
in fact when I was thinking about doing this show he was one of the people that
I called because I know that he spends a lot of time on his social media page
with LinkedIn and he’s going to talk all about that I’m sure so I’m gonna try not to do that now even though it’s trying
to come out I’m going to shove it back in and I asked him you know what type of commitment is this and should I do it
and he didn’t pause for a second he said absolutely you need to do this because
it is a lot of work and that’s not the reason you need to do it because I’m sure as he told me that we’ve got plenty
of work to do so we’re not looking for more work but the stuff you get
of because you choose to put this information out there is where the real
reward is now I got to tell you we were on the phone so he couldn’t see my facial expression but I kind of thought
that he was feeding me a line there but he wasn’t this showed us take a lot of
work I’m not gonna sugarcoat that at all there’s a there’s a whole bunch that goes into putting up or putting a
scaling up podcast on the on the internet there and then getting the word
out so people actually want to listen to it but it is a hundred percent worth it
and he did not tell me something that wasn’t true he definitely steered me in the right
direction so it only makes sense that I would have James McDonald on scaling up
since he was so instrumental in me starting this show so let’s get into our
conversation with James McDonald my lab partner today is James McDonald of Kim
aqua how are you today James I’m doing great thanks for having me trace well I
am delighted to have you and very excited about the conversation that you and I are getting ready to have yes well
for those of you out there in the scaling-up nation that have not had the
opportunity to meet James you have missed out so James can you please tell
them a little bit about yourself yes I have been in water treatment since 1997
I’m a chemical engineer by degree I have my master’s from the University of Louisville but Mike came out of college
and I worked for an environmental compliance company and I got to do environmental compliance assessments for
the FAA for some army bases and I got to drive in my car on runways flying down
the runway and getting off the last second for a plane lands and that was really exciting but nowhere near as
exciting as my career in water treatment when I started with crown engineering that became crown solutions and I worked
there for many many years now I gotta wear so many different hats there’s had a fantastic time and then when they
bought out were bought out by Veolia by Ken six company changed and when I reached
the point where I no longer wanted to be there I happen to see a LinkedIn ad pop-up that was the very first time I’d
ever had seen my job as a corporate engineer written out and it was like a message from from from above I guess it
was and I hung out my shingle to a few more people and I ended up picking that the job that was on the LinkedIn ad and
I ended up here at Komaki in 2014 and it has been the most fantastic ride I love
what I do and I love the people I work with and I love sharing what I do with other people as well well that is
obviously true with the amount of work that you do with AWT and of course that’s how you and I met and I can’t
believe that you got that job off of LinkedIn I figured they were calling here every day trying to get you to jump
ship to come over there it was a LinkedIn it works about that and I know
we’re gonna talk a lot about LinkedIn in a couple of minutes but before we do I
am so impressed by the amount of knowledge that you have I know you do
you answer a lot of questions on LinkedIn but I know just you and I have asked each other questions and and the
stuff that you come up with is just amazing how in the world did you become
such a well-rounded water treater well what do you say come up with I say make up but you know you know I started off
at crown solutions or crown engineering I think I was very lucky to start there I didn’t start off you know with with an
elk or the BET’s experiences where they had used to have the wonderful schools the training schools the water schools
they had back then but I did have a secondary BET’s education because the folks I used to work with were best
employees at one time so I started off with a well-rounded what water treatment company for we did boiler cooling
pretreatment wastewater as well and we based our solutions on whatever the proper balance was of the chemistry
equipment and service and you know we never shied away from anything we tried anything out there and we so to honor
our technical abilities and the fact that I was hard to be in our technical
support department but to gain that experience I had to be on the field for several years so I serviced accounts
my pinks and blues I had you know the happy customers and the upset customers but I moved in to the office and any
time out there I saw something that either irritated me because it wasn’t easy enough or there is a better way of
doing something and I can make myself a tool or something to make that better anytime and make it better for myself I
would share it with anyone around me out there and one thing I was talking earlier on as well what was that in our
profession and in any profession people reach a knowledge plateau they learn as
much as they need to do to do their job and then oftentimes they’re comfortable there and they don’t really learn much
more after that for the rest of their career and I was taught that as long as you keep trying to learn more and more
each day each week you know you make an effort to do that all those other guys
who started at the same time you did will never catch up so that’s what I love to do I love to learn I love I love
to read about it write about it discuss it teach us hear it all of that above and I was lucky enough to have an
important employer early on who saw the value of me attending the dawt so I give a lot of credit to the AWT as well
because my career grew up with the the a WT and within the a WT you got al
Bassett has always been a great encouragement for me angela plank i can’t not mention her and so many more who encouraged me to
contribute all that i had and you know for from writing in the analyst to the
the pretreatment subcommittee we will talk about that later I’m sure but you know the the rest is history but I love
learning drop by drop and sharing what I know with others as so many forms well you mentioned learning drop by drop
and I in my archives on my bookshelf have a book by you name drop by drop
saw fantastic I’m glad you have it they thank you very much that what that was that was a fun book to make it’s an
assembly of articles I’d written for internal and external newsletters over
several years and it’s learning drop by drop one one drop at a time is a very
bite-sized it’s very practical one one thing that people say about but my writing is
very practical and usable and that book now is on every non frozen continent and
I just had an elect in message this afternoon from a guy in Saudi Arabia who
just ordered it and he’s anxiously awaiting for it he tells me so that’s that that’s pretty cool well how about
that and as a math and chemistry nerd myself I am amazed at some of the
obscure things that you have in there and how you prove some of the things that we do on a day to day basis I
really enjoy that oh great thank you thank you very much well lemon absolutely well let me ask what are some
of the biggest changes that you’ve seen in water treatment over your career what I’d look at water treatment I think
by the history a water treatment and I think of the early days when you hear the legend of the bag of potatoes that
that was hung in a boiler and it was fastened back up and the in the scale was softer the next time they opened it
Indian you hear the the legends before my time in your time for of chromates
being used and and and they were banned in in cooling towers and so they they
had to completely change the chemistry of cooling towers to be alkaline based you know those those were big changes
absolutely big changes and what I think about what we’re going through now you know we’re not going through those big
big changes our biggest change right now is is is Legionella but but for chemistry wise it seems like the ones we
are dealing with today a more gradual with the you know the green polymers the tannins are making a comeback you know
biosigns having further understood and an approach with them a bit different with Legionella on board but perhaps the
you know the biggest one that’s that’s making a splash right now after the patents expired is is PTSA for for
controlling our products so and you guys are using a lot of PTSA at chem aqua yeah we do yes we do so I know I had Jim
Luca niche on a couple of months ago and we were talking about PTSA and I think
he had mentioned that a lot of people are using PTSA in lieu of some of their
other tests that could be absorbed into the system what do you say about that
and how do you caution your reps around that absolutely the most important part of any product are the
actives actually doing the work and PTSA isn’t doing any work it’s in there the
parts-per-billion and there certainly are interferences with that and it’s it’s not tagged to anything and so
absolutely PTSA it should be a guidance but it should be checked on a regular
basis depending upon your system by actually measuring as many of the actives as you can to make sure that
really a product is doing what it should be doing know what you think it’s doing but not aren’t really sure I think
that’s great advice so you said you now are in your dream job can you describe so you say yes yes
I do have my dream job so what is your day-to-day like oh I you know I get
number one I work with wonderful people here I cannot say enough about the people and I love the variety I have in
my job I don’t make the same widget every every single day I come in and I answer technical questions I get a write
about technical issues I get to make technical tools I get to work with a team of programmers to refine the tools
we have I get to make technical presentations I get involved in training
making videos website design graphical design I have a team I manage that’s
Tara and Naomi and Nancy I do a shout out to them and just L and then the most important part of my job is telling bad
dant jokes do you have one for us right now but all
right so so so let’s get into the epic fail question because because everybody on the scaling-up audience loves the
epic fail come up with this brilliant idea you know it’s gonna be awesome you roll it out you put it out there and
it just falls flat on his face what was it oh man well we mentioned my book drop
by drop articles on industrial water treatment that is 486 pages pretend of
one article at a time drop by drop and every one of my mistakes up to that point or in that book you know everyone
had their their mistakes from for they got soaked for the water I went for four years in my career
without getting soaked with water and then one day there we were we were installing a new controller on a cooling
tower and it wasn’t turned on yet and they were like eight people around me and I wanted to look at that’s one component and I forgot to make sure the
valves are turned off and it was isolated it was offline and I opened up the the flow indicator and I got soaked
in front of eight people so I went from years of nothing happening to all of a sudden I had an audience of II I know we
have all been there maybe not around eight people but I know we’ve all have gotten wet from that Valve we thought
was closed yes it’s very apparent you loved the water treatment industry so with that
being said what what are some of the things what are the top items that you love about this industry well am I
allowed to say Angela Pike five times because I believe we’re on number three right now it never hurts to be on her
good side no I’m seriously what I love about this industry is you can learn
every single day there’s such variety and what we do sure you you can get
stuck in the pinks and blues but unfortunately in both fortunately it’s the troubleshooting that really makes it
interesting if everything worked every single day our job would be so boring but it doesn’t because the nature of the
job and I love the people I mean I I once had a customer he would bring me
donuts and milk and we’d sit down and have milk and dullness together before before we worked he showed up at my wedding even yes and the sharing the
sharing of what we know and the fact that we have a venue like the AWT to to
help share all of this is fantastic and I had Anna oh yeah
and then the problem solving but we get to live you know the show how it’s made
we get to live that often times when we go out to factories we get to see how so many things are made I’ve seen how how
turkeys are defended I’ve seen how insulation is made with this laser-like
stream a molten glass that gets spun out into end into insulation and it’s the
coolest thing and we get to live that every single day I cannot agree more well let me ask the opposite of that
question what don’t you like about this industry what don’t like about the industry you know I don’t know like when
people ignore the closed loops I believe you mentioned on a previous podcast of yours how that can’t believe that was a
boy yes it was the most ignored for Synovus system because you know they they aren’t that the money makers always
using chemistry out there I don’t like it when people don’t install or use
their their corrosion coupons you mentioned how they can be installed and they’re in the wrong order even worse
than that perhaps is not installing them at all and you know I don’t like when people don’t follow up on their promises
but the worst part about the industry sometimes is I don’t like it when competitors badmouth each other I think
if you gotta sell yourself by bad-mouthing the other guy you’re missing something you’re selling yourself by your qualities and what you
offer and if I the value you bring I love that answer I love that answer
so so let’s get into some of the things that you’re doing and I know you are
very active on social media and especially LinkedIn so I wanted to spend some time around that because there
might be some people in a scaling-up nation that aren’t aware about that so tell us what’s going on there well on a
LinkedIn back in 2011 I think it was I wonder know what LinkedIn was about
people are using it but I didn’t know the Taira LinkedIn so the first thing I did was make my profile and I wanted the
100% rating and I kept working and working making my profile more and more complete and I couldn’t get that when
trading until I figured out you gotta have references as well he did ask anyone for references but I finally did
it and I got that one when I wasn’t reading but I have a very complete profile I have to cut cause of my efforts on
trying to reach that but then I also saw a LinkedIn they have groups and I was
looking at the groups and I saw so many of the groups were just commercials and ads and spam and what-have-you and I was
like you know I want to make a group they they can make a group why can’t I and but what can I make that’s different
so I thought about it and what i did was i stiii well instead of my audience
asking all the questions i will flip this paradigm around and i’ll ask all the questions and I wanted to make sure my group
didn’t compete with the AWT listserv as well where they allowed you know our members to join the the listserv and and
ask all these questions no the members get the answer so in my group started in November 2011 I asked a question of the
day and and I have asked up to over 900 questions of the day now never the same
question twice because I keep track of them on a spreadsheet I now have twelve thousand five hundred
and seventy seven members from yes from a hundred and forty three different
countries and I ask a question and I keep them you know simple and broad intentionally
and these people from all these countries answer these questions and you know it’s been a fantastic experience
well I got to tell you as a show host I am so impressed with that I kind of feel
like micro every week if you remember Dirty Jobs he said please if you don’t send me ideas I’m not gonna have a show
for very much longer and I can’t believe coming up with 9u 900 unique ideas
that’s that’s just amazing to me I think it just shows you know the the variety we have in our inter careering and our
profession because 900 you know am i you know once I reach a thousand oh no boy what I’m gonna do and the other
beautiful thing about this group is it’s a great knowledge tool it’s fully searchable I go back and I searches it
sometimes do it define various answers and and and I post as well I I make a summary of all the questions I don’t
make a summary of all the answers that takes a lot more work but I do keep a list of the questions in Excel and I’ll
make that available sometimes so people can search that as well to see what all I’ve asked over these years well for
those out in the scaling-up nation that are not part of your group how can they join
well of course yet you have to have a membership on LinkedIn but once you’re in LinkedIn go up top in the search bar
and search for industrial water treatment that’s industrial water treatment it’s a group you may want to
filter down to groups and once you’re there request to be a member and every
day or two or three you know I check to see who’s waiting to be a member and I will approve you and
please join us there there are people you know being a water treat or is a lonely job it really can be you’re out
there by yourself you’re one-man team your family has no idea what you do your friends have no idea what you do the guy
at the coffee shop no idea what you do and most of your customers have no idea what you do so I find water treaters
oftentimes are hungry to connect with other water treaters in my industrial water treatment group gives water trade
feeders another way of connecting with someone else talking about something with which interest them and I swear
there are some people out there in the in this world who almost wait for the next question of the day because they’re
on there immediately answering and I love that as I like to say these are twelve thousand five hundred seventy
seven of my closest friends and water treatment I got I love it well you weren’t happy with just that
you’re actually doing some other things tell us about those well also on LinkedIn I like to have fun and bring in
and bring some other avenues and into water treatment so LinkedIn has their pulse articles and I have a series I
have a detective h2o series and I’ve written eight articles so far on there
and detective h2o it’s a guy his name is Henry I’m sorry Herbert Henry accidenti I
otherwise known as detective h2o and he faces water treatment
challenges day in and day out and it is a detective new our new our style which
the beautiful thing about detective knew our style is writing badly is good so I
get a write as badly as I want to with all these corny detective type sayings and you know I think it’s good at least
but I have different stories out there I had the case of the shortchanging deaq eliezer or the case of high irony for
this high iron in a closed loop or the case of de plume de plume or he’s
talking about a deaerator and how much it ought to be vented or not or the case of normalization where we’re talking
about tracking an ro determining of when it ought to be cleaned in the case of being hammered when we’re discovering a
condensate leak or the case of standing for he discovers why why this con is a
polisher isn’t working right or my last one was a case of breaking free and involves you know a microbiologic
liyan faoud ro but it’s kind of funny and the characters that come in you know it’s it’s fun so when you look me up and
you look at my profile on LinkedIn and look at the things I’ve created you will see those listed as well it’s just
amazing James when you sleep well I have kids too so not not as much as I need to
that’s that’s for sure oh and also and also on Facebook I I
have an industrial water treatment group on there it’s not as active but on Facebook being more of an informal type
as a social media I can post some more fun items on there James I gotta
congratulate you I know one of the reasons I started doing this show was to give people just that extra push because
we are alone in more cars and we might need a little bit extra something to get to that next piece of knowledge and and
you’ve just done so much to achieve that and I just think it’s amazing I applaud you for it okay thank you very much thank you thank
you trace for doing this when you called me up and totally you you were doing a blog I I had actually I considered you
know I mean an online podcast I’d consider the the same thing before but when you totally you were doing it I’m
like I’m not the right guy for that trace is the right guy for that you have that melodic voice that works perfect
for a podcast so thank you very much for doing this well I appreciate that and I don’t know what melodic means but I’m
going to look that up and I’m going to assume it was a compliment so thank you
so so so we’re just awesome let’s just agree on that oh we are we are yes yes
all right well let’s talk about some of the other things that that you do around the association of Water Technologies
and there’s a whole bunch of projects in the Association that have your name on
them so let’s talk a few about those sure well I have been the the sub subcommittee chairman of the
pretreatment committee for over a decade now actually and in my tenure there and
I have a wonderful team who helped me out with all these projects so none of these things are done alone but we the
very first thing we made and on the pretreatment subcommittee was a boiler pretreatment matrix you
at all the pretreatment options but it’s put it to a table format or tells you you know what this pretreatment is
designed to remove what are the typical flow rates what are the tests to figure
out if it’s operating if operating correctly some some comments on them and that the ease-of-use is in there as well
so it’s a really good summary of boiler pretreatment and even got included in the technical reference and training
manual as well so it’s part of the boiler chapter there I think it might be a part of a part of the pretreatment chapter but we did that we’ve also made
a series of Microsoft Excel workbooks and we made them for a water softener at
the ocular a reverse osmosis and each of these calculate things like capacity or
but they go beyond that for the for the water softener you also can do an
illusion study with with one of the forms in there there’s a troubleshooting form in there as well there’s a lot of
information in there beyond just calculations there’s even a resin analysis advice form in there as well
and the pretreatment is very similar to that and the reverse osmosis Microsoft
Excel workbook even has the ability to do an analysis of comparing a boiler
with only a water softener makeup source to adding ro as well with the water softener either before or after the RO
so you could do and economic comparison and economic analysis of that – yeah
it’s really nice you can find each of these in the members only section of the AWT website and look under pre treatment
and you’ll find those I’ve also have been so lucky to be able to do so much with it with the AWT to have people
believe me in me enough to ask me to do these things but when we rewrote the CWT
exam certified water technologist exam I got asked to to work on that and I had
no idea how hard it really is to write a good exam we had a lady working with us
who had her PhD basically in exam writing and she had she even told us a
story for she was helping a plumbing group a plumbing trade group write their exam and she sat down and took their old
exam and knowing the mistakes that exam writers make like like often times the longest option is the answer kind of
thing she was able to pass their exam not knowing much about plumbing at all but she about been licensed by that
organization because of that so that was a really neat experience and it helped make much better exam than what was
there before I’ve also get got involved in the in the analyst lot I’ve had several articles in
the analyst and because been before Tia I gave him an electronic like trying to
copy I might drop by drop book he has pulled many articles out of that book
into the into the analyst as well which may possibly make me the most published author in the analyst Wow I think you
heard it here first that’s will give you that title right now there you go I’ll take that you know I’ve dabbled in the marketing committee
and I’ve done some presentations and at the convention I’ve done a webinar as
well but what I love about the AWT is that you know anything you’re so an
interest in people love being helped in this organization and actually we’re
desperate for a volunteer sometimes as well and if you have an ability and you have the passion and you carry through
on what you say you’ll do you can share that with AWT well let’s talk about that for a second because I know we have so
many new members and new faces in the organization and they might look at somebody like yourself and see that
you’re the most published person in the AWT and you’re asking for help and I just don’t feel comfortable coming up
and asking you if I can help you out so what advice do you have for those people I would say you know when we have our
convention if you can come to our conventions and the times we have are our subcommittee meetings or a committee
meetings just come and sit down we’re not gonna bug you we’re not gonna harass you we’re not gonna ask you a hundred
questions just come in and sit down and listen and when if when we have our our conference calls once once a month just
call in and listen we have plenty of people who do that there’s always a core few who who really are the ones who are
talking and answer questions and and and in helping and what-have-you but you know you you don’t have to contribute
for from day one come in and listen and learn and as you gain confidence then
slowly over time you can contribute but we don’t expect wonderful fantastic
you know sparkly things out of any one day one day except for you except for me exactly exactly so what are you working
on for a WT right now well right now for the for the pretreatment subcommittee our focus on deaeration in deaerators so
we’re working on our next series of our Microsoft Excel workbooks so that that’s
our next thing we’re doing we did just update some minor updates to the that
same section on deaeration in the technical reference in training manual and we the next thing I got to do is my
my subcommittee gave me their edits for the pretreatment or the external
treatment section of the technical reference a training manual so I need to assemble all the reddit’s so we could
turn that into the AWT so that the technical reference a training manual is a living breathing accurate document
that’s that’s it well that’s it that’s amazing I mean you I can’t imagine what
the AWT would be like if there was no James McDonald so thanks for everything that you do for our organization well
let me let me tell you this so I was speaking with a member or a previous
member I should say here in Atlanta and I said you know I’m looking forward to the convention and I guess I’ll see you
there and they’re like no trace we didn’t see value in our membership so we don’t pay that anymore because we just
we just don’t see that AWT does anything for us what would you say to that oh my goodness gracious
number one he hasn’t spoken to Angela pike who’s like a great salesman for
they devotee but number four by the way yeah number four yeah exactly you know
attending the the conventions is the most valuable thing you go there not only for the papers which I like the
papers at a WT convention more than any other conventions I’ve been to because I feel I get more meat and less commercial
out of the AWT papers and so I learned so much by doing that and then talking
to other people the networking is absolutely invaluable and the aw t is such a rare organization where even
though we are competitors across the country when you pass through those
doors you’re like you know you’re like normal walking into the bar on cheers yeah well everyone is we’re friends it’s like your
second family and i love what i learned from for my second family like that as well and you participate in the committee’s
and the subcommittees and there’s member discounts which which are really important for smaller companies you got the analysts as well to read you got all
the tools more like the ones we made for the that’s on the members only section you got the listserv it’s an email it’s
an email address you even out to a distribution list it goes out to several hundred of your colleagues and they can
answer your question they and they and they can answer almost immediately even and in the head their regional trainings
that you know you can challenge your employees to to achieve their certified of water technologist or CWT licensing
and you can market that to tell your customers hey i’m qualify and I’m extra
qualified because we’re at CWT and and all the businesses you have contact with
you know how often do you get get to see all those vendors in one room to talk
with them so you get a connect with them and there’s so much more I mean with all of that how can you say it’s not
valuable that’s just that’s just crazy talk yes I could not agree more
so you’re an avid listener of scaling up yes and I know you’re familiar with my
segment that I call the boiling point mm-hmm so why don’t we have the James McDonald boiling point so a lot of water
treaters doing out there that you just wish they would stop doing not following through on their promises but the most
annoying thing at all I think I would say is bad-mouthing their competitors I
don’t think you should be able to sell you should not try to sell yourself by sort changing the next guy you should
sell yourself by your attributes your quality is the value you bring to a client well let me ask how do you find
new business well you know look in my position here in a work world was in in
in crown I’m more I’m more inside I’m a technical support and I support our guys
out there finding their new business so you know I don’t have a perfect answer for you I don’t have a qualified answer
for you because they do that and I help them get it alright we say hey guys you gotta find a new business
that’s it all right so what will let me ask this what are some of the support
items that help people get new business oh you know having having the there’s
several out there number one of course is you know the God I have the people
connection and I’ve really learned a really appreciation for it for the people side of the business over the
years but then behind that after you get through the front door and pass the gatekeeper and all of that you have that
personal connection then they need to know that you actually know what you’re talking about and so that’s where the
training programs come in whether it’s an internal training program or use the aw teacher training programs what have
you you know having having your reps trained properly to answer those
questions and answer those questions consistently and having the technical
support behind those reps so that when they are honest and they say you know I don’t know the answer to that instead of
making up an answer I don’t know they answer that but my people will and let me I’ll get back with you on that those
are the tools you need to support selling so when they say my people know it you’re the people you’re the people
yes well I’m part of the people we have a wonderful team here absolutely some very qualified people all right well you
obviously know a lot about water treatment so when you want to learn something new where do you go
I ask my colleagues I ask the vendors I research on on the Internet I research
books III study it you know all the above in trade shows and you know
there’s so many we live in a world now where so much as at our fingertips that you can at least start doing it and
another way of learning into new things is is not being afraid of new challenges because you don’t know what you don’t
know until you face a new challenge that points it out to you someone once told me that if you were in water treatment
and learned something new every single day you had to be successful would you agree with that yes I would agree with
that would you subscribe to that I absolutely do I try to learn something new every
day it’s not always about water treatment but it’s about the other aspects of my job and all around that
makes me a more well-rounded person alright so putting you on the spot a little bit what new did you learn today what I learned today
Oh today we were videotaping that the president of our of our company here for for a recruiting video and I was in the
background observing the the tricks of the trade because you know I make all that all this stuff up myself and so I
was watching professionals do do that instead so I learned something very cool
all right so who would you say has helped you the most in your water-treatment career no I would say
it’s it’s many people actually I would include it in that list one of my closest water-treatment friends Jeff
Eldridge who tucked me on my very first boiler inspection at the Ohio State University at Katrina engineering my
first boss Dave Kristofferson who always encouraged me and shared all of his knowledge with me he spent a lot of time
with me doing that and at the AWT went one of the first guys I really met there really has always encouraged me is it’s
al Basset he’s such a good guy in the course you know I’m mentioning for the fifth or sixth time now Angela Pike and
in my current manager Allen browning who continues to support me and all of my passions I have for the first of the
water treatment business so it takes a village it takes a village exactly thank
you well Jase this has been a great interview it what what else do we need to talk about that we missed something
there’s another thing I wanted to talk about and that’s young professionals and how they’re coming into the industry and
how do they learn whether what they don’t know and I I have a speaking earlier this week with Michele farmerie
who you had on on another podcast and we were talking about all the different resources available online out there but
if she’s gonna be doing a presentation of some sort on that and now let’s going through all the different online
resources I use one of which is the AWT website Members Only and we were listening all the stuff on that but I
also was pointing out other places I go to like like like the tailor technologies website for the for for
test receivers the Aqua Phoenix website for their test procedures the Hawk website for their test procedures all these different websites you can go to
and I just happen to own a domain called industrial water science and I took that
discussion that I had with Michelle incorporated it into industrial water
science comm you know it’s still a work in progress but I would like to encourage your listeners to go there and
take a look at that maybe learn about some some new connections to some new resources that they don’t know about and
I also have listed I have a detective h2o section so that’s another way to get to that but it’s it’s a work in progress
it’s it’s a passionate hobby of mine so yeah take a look at it
Wow you know I I always thought I was a pretty big cheerleader for the water treatment industry but I do not hold a
candle to you my friend oh I don’t know about that all right well next up we’ve
got the lightning round so are you ready for this I’m ready for this all right so what are the last three books that
you’ve read okay I think that’s funny because I have a four year old named Noah and a nine year old named Gracie
and I’m absolutely positive the last three books I read were all kids books in your name one yeah we know I can’t
really what I was probably on rescue bots and the other one one of us probably on on paw Patrol but there it
but outside of that in this past week I’ve been binge listening to to the rest of the scaling up podcast as well but
but before that you know my books I quote unquote read I’d listen to in the car so I do
lots of book books on tape I have anywhere from a 40-minute to an hour drive home each day and into work each
day so I got plenty of time to be on the road and listening to books on tape or books on CD and so before that I was
listening to the Bible actually the New Testament I stopped when I was on Luke
but I used my EWTN app for that and before that the books on tape I was
listening to I was going through the ho dude series so I like a mixture of you
know of fiction nonfiction and business and not why do naturally has a
water-treatment reference because one of my heroes in water treatment Jim Lucca niche he actually explains the corrosion
model with you know the electrons must flow he says the spice must flow this place
yes the whole water reference in dune was not lost on me most definitely I am a huge Back to the
Future fan so so we’re gonna get inside a DeLorean and we’re gonna activate that
flux capacitor and we’re going to set the time circuitry back to the first day
where you started water treatment yes and you’re gonna have the ability to get out and advise yourself that first day
in water treatment some advice that you know right now today yes
well first off I’ll probably be kind of Disney because I always thought that would make you kind of dizzy doing that but I think you know I’m not one to
dwell on on the past or wish I’d done things differently because I know that that that the mistakes and right choices
I made make me the person I am today so I think my anytime I think of a question
like this my advice to myself is is you’re gonna have a great time have a great time learn learn learn share share
share laugh laugh laugh and I think I’ve done all that so keep doing that so keep
doing what you’re doing keep doing what you’re doing I am a very happy guy awesome and it shows so and because of
that obviously they’re going to make a movie about your life oh yes my question is who plays you in the movie and it
can’t be Angela Pike I’ll tell you what I picked and I think this is the perfect
choice Sean Connery because if he can play James Bond he’s just about
qualified to portray James McDonald and water treatment just I don’t know if James Bond is as cool as James McDonald
so I have to see course modesty as I
said is my best trait apparently you and me both alright so so final question if
you could talk to any body throughout history who would it be with and why Oh
having binge listened to all of your past podcasts so many people touched so
many good ones I I’d consider dance answering Benjamin Benjamin Franklin but that was taken and the one are really
what was gonna give was Jesus but but Michelle took that one gave a great answer on that so I want to be original
and I thought I’d come up with with with one of the next best things and my
choice is Pope Saint John Paul the second he was he was my Pope all through
my life and I’ve always admired his historian making out of the Second World War you know being from Poland becoming
Pope all this stuff but I really loved his strong message on valuing life at
all stages young and old and he stood as a testament of that because as he became
sick as he became frail he never gave up and it to his dying breath he showed
life has value at every single second and I to me he’s a very exceptionally
positive influence on the world all of the name of someone else not him someone
else and I greatly admire that well great answer and I have to say you are a positive influence on water
treatment and thanks for everything that you do that you continue to do and above all else thanks for being on scaling-up
I this was a lot of fun I think our listeners are really going to enjoy this and I know I have enjoyed the interview
let’s thank you very much Tracy and thank you for everything you do you do as well we certainly appreciate tres
Blackmore and we would be less of a profession without you thank you all right and with that we’re both awesome
yes absolutely and very modest so I guess we’ve all learned from that interview that James and I are both
awesome and modest so what more did you need to learn thou has a lot of fun of I
I truly am humbled by James I feel that
on the show and in volunteering with AWT that I do a lot for a water-treatment community but when I hear all the stuff
that he does I I do nothing compared to him so wow so we’re glad that people
like him are out there so let’s get into some pinks and blues and this is where I
answer questions that you write in to me via my website scaling-up h2o calm and
let me know what you want me to talk about and not talk about it so the first question
we’re gonna talk about and this was a random picking I just went ahead and randomly picked this out for this show
sometimes I stack the deck with questions that I feel like talking about more than others but I didn’t do that
here and I actually think we got some interesting questions one I probably wouldn’t have brought on the show anyway
I guess I should just ask the questions so the first one is this person just
switched hardness manufactured hardness test kit manufacturers and the softener
used to be soft all the time with the old manufacturer and now it’s hard all
the time so is something wrong with the softener is something wrong with the
test kit well I want to tell you that here at Blackmore Enterprises we had
that exact same thing happen and and I took some liberties with questions
that’s they asked me some more specific items but I’m not gonna use names or anything like that because I promised
you I would never do that here on scaling-up but we were using manufacturer a and the softener was soft
all the time and then we switched to manufacturer B and it was soft some of
the time but a lot of the times we were getting that red red tinge to the
hardness test and as those of you know out there in the scaling up nation a soft sample is nice and blue and if it
has a red color to it then that indicates hardness and then we add the EDA to it as a titrant
until it grabs all that hardness and then turns it blue so in a softener situation as soon as we put the buffer
in there and the indicator in there we want that sucker to be nice and blue well we we thought that the softener was
malfunctioning and it actually was and the only reason we found that out was
because the tests that we then started buying with manufacturer B actually was
able to test to a smaller degree less than a part per million
the other test was only testing down to like two or three parts per million and
we actually worked with somebody and we sent those off and actually had an
independent lab measure those using a different method and we actually found
that out that one of the test manufacturers was able to get that lower so it might be your tests are working
fine but they’re only working in the limits that they are able to work in and
what we did we when we did that we found out that we were actually putting hard water in when we thought we were putting
soft water in with the other manufacturer manufacturer a and that actually explained some of the readings
that we were getting where we were losing alkalinity on occasions and things like that the boiler was still
clean but everything didn’t add up and then we found that when we were testing
with this with this lower range test kit that we were actually leaking over some
hardness so I say this because the boilers in order to be soft need to be
less actually I think it’s supposed to be less than half a part per million so if your test kits only testing two or
three when it says it’s soft that’s several times higher than half a part
per million so make sure you know what your test kit is actually doing and even
in the same manufacturers they have different ranges so if one drop equals
ten parts that’s probably not good in your toy train that’s probably not good enough for a softener you probably want
to figure out either how to change the sample size or maybe change the test kit
so you can you can get that to a really fine amount but then also realize that your tests that you’re using may not go
as low as you think it goes so hopefully that helps a next question is this is
the question that I think is fun because it asked me it says trace what do you do for fun so that has to be a fun question
right I think I talked about this when I interviewed myself on the second show but maybe I
and I am a scuba dive instructor that is my passion I absolutely love being
underwater it is the most therapeutic thing that I can think of underwater you
can fly around like Superman you want to go up you go up you go down go down you can bank left bank right it’s totally
awesome and I love it so much and and you out there the scaling-up nation know
that one of my passions is teaching so I actually teach scuba diving to other
people and try to get them to enjoy it as much as I do so to answer your question and I don’t
even have to think about it what I do for fun is I scuba dive and I know mark
Lewis has been brought up on this show mark Lewis and I scuba dive together so so there you go it’s fun for water
figures to get to get together and you know we’re working in water and now we’re we’re playing in water too so just
have a whole life that talks about water or deals with water so thanks for asking that question I enjoy talking about that
oh and by the way I want to say that teaching scuba diving has made me a
better instructor because when you’re teaching somebody that they’re not going to die you learn how to deal with people
at a different level because everybody’s scared that you know there’s no air underneath that water and you’ve got to
convince them that if an emergency or if a situation I should rather say happens
underwater you can deal with it underwater and not panic and go up to the surface because
when you take my dive class you will learn that once you have all that pressure under you underwater and then
you get up too quickly and that pressure is gone you can actually hurt yourself and I have to convince people that when
their brain is going through that something’s wrong okay do I fight it or do I flight it that they have to go
through that fight function because if they flight it they can actually turn an inconvenience into an accident so being
able to deal with people on that level I think has made me a much better instructor when it comes to water
treatment because on a good day nobody dies in water treatment normally people don’t die in
scuba diving so that’s probably a bad analogy but that being said you know it’s it’s just dealing with people on
that level I think has paid P a better instructor okay let me move on to my final question otherwise I will keep talking about
scuba maybe I’ll do a pod show podcast just on scuba so this last question is
which is better lsi RSI or psi so for
those of you out there in the scaling-up nation that don’t know what those letters stand for so there’s the Longy
Lear stability index the R is nurse stability index and the practical or sometimes called pakora Asst scaling
index so which one’s better for those of
you that listen to this show better is not a word that I really like but I understand why you ask is but better is
an opinion so I’m going to explain what they are and then I’m going to explain
to you why I use one and then you get to make the choice for yourself so the LSI so let’s back up all of them
are the same thing what they deal with is when calcium carbonate comes out of
solution or goes into solution okay we’re either precipitating or we
are dissolving if you will and right in the middle where neither of those has
happen is called the the saturation pH so that’s the equation that all of these
different scales use and then they do something with it to make it unique and
then they can name it something else like LSI RSI or psi so LSI takes the
saturation pH and what you do is you take the system pH and you subtract the
saturation pH from it and then that’s LSI and the range from that is negative
3 to 3 and then anything above zero is has a scaling tendency anything below
zero has an on scaling tendency notice I didn’t say have a corrosive tendency as
a lot of those charts will actually say we’re all water traders we know water is the universal
solvent ie all water is corrosive now some water might be more aggressive than
others depending on what’s dissolved in it but that being said all water is corrosive so I look at these as scaling
indexes or stability indexes and it’s either scaling or non scaling so then we
get the RSI the R is nurse stability index and what that does is it takes the saturation pH times two and then it
takes that quantity and subtracts it from the system pH and that’s a range
between 0 and 12 and anything above 6 has an on scaling tendency and anything
below 6 has a scaling tendency and then we get mr. Paul Peck aureus who has yet
to be on my show Paul if you’re out there someone knows Paul I want to know
where this equation came from I’ve got lots of questions for you so please contact me I’ve been trying so what Paul
did is he took the saturation pH and multiplied it by 2 just like we did an
RSI but then he subtracted it instead of using the system pH he used the pH of
equilibrium and here’s the question that I have from for Paul the pH of
equilibrium is one point four six five times the log of the M alkalinity and
then that quantity is added to four point five for any of you that have
taken my math class know that I do not like constants because when you say hey what’s that constant people say oh
that’s a rule of thumb and that’s just a way for people saying I have no idea what it is just plug it in and don’t ask
me any more questions but I don’t like that I don’t want to just simply learn how to do an equation I want to
understand an equation so that’s what I need help with Paul I don’t understand one where the one point four six five
comes from and I don’t understand why we’re adding 4.5 4 – that so please come on the show
and let me know why that is the way it is oh and by the way that scale is exactly the same as the RSI it’s 0 to 12
above 6 as an on scaling tendency and below 6 is a scaling tendency so the
question is which one is better which one you think is better which one works
best for you Collin frein actually has my best definition and for those of you
know Collin Frank he’s English and I am NOT so I’ll try to do my best Collin frame he says if LSI is scaling then RSI says
it’s really scaling and if or a size says it’s really scaling then psi says it’s really really scaling and he says
something like Tallyho pip-pip Bob’s your uncle something like that Collin please forgive me but no that’s exactly
I mean that’s pretty much what it says now which one is the best for you you
get to choose you know where they come from now I’ll tell you the one that I use is RSI and the only simple reason
that I use RSI is because that’s what my father used and that’s what he taught me so that’s what I’m used to so we here at
Blackburn er prizes we use RSI not because one’s better than the other but because that’s what I’m used to so I
hope that answers your question I don’t think I answered your question but I gave you some things to think about and
folks that’s the whole purpose of this show I hope it sparks a little bit more
of what you’re thinking about or maybe you had a question but you didn’t really go to find the answer and now this show
gives you just that little push to make you want to get a little bit better and understand what you do on a day to day
basis a little bit better and if it’s doing that I’m doing my job and of
course my job is bringing you scaling up and I’m glad you’re listening to it I
hope you make tomorrow a chance to be a better water trader than you were today and I hope you join me next time on
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